Aja Gabel uses music and the people who perfect music to interpret human relationships. Anyone who loves classical music will love The Ensemble.
Gabel offers up long, fluid explanations of what’s being played: “The first movement, Jana trying to convince the audience of a placid pastoral theme, and the supporting notes martial, marching always forward, and as the martial themes start to overtake the pastoral melody, Jana fights back, and at the end, in an accelerating coda, Jana wins, two soft notes plucked in time to two harmonic eights.”
Jana is the leader of a string quartet she formed with Bret, Daniel and Henry in the early 1990s while at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Born into a struggling blue collar Texas family, Daniel has worked so hard at it, that his body has begun to expand around the cello, his arms lengthening, his shoulders broadening.
Both Bret’s parents were musicians, teaching and playing with Seattle-area bands. They encouraged her talent, hired violin coaches and sent her off to a good college. They both died before she graduated.
Jana found her own way into the accelerated high school music programs, winning competitions and earning scholarships while surviving in the chaos of her mother’s alcohol-fueled, Hollywood-seeking lifestyle. As the lead violinist, she’s keenly aware of the relationships between the rest of the quartet, on and off the stage.
Henry is the prodigy, the youngest and so talented that he hasn’t worked nearly as hard as e everyone else. He also grew up with a loving and a wealthy family. Despite his privilege, Henry is so enamored with perfect F sharps, muted B minors, sustained vibratos, the inner tempo and harmony within the quartet, he is generous and unassuming with all of them.
Each one of them takes their turn telling the story. From their early successes in the 1990s to the quartet’s farewell performance at Carnegie Hall in 2010, their bodies succumb to tendonitis, bad backs and permanent divots in their necks and chests from their instruments’ tuning nobs. Their emotional crises far outweigh the challenges to their aging bodies.
Practicing for hours each day except the intense days leading up to performances, they also travel regularly, they’re together on planes, in taxis and at their hotels. They cannot develop outside relationships don’t impact the group.
Aja Gabel uses marvelous musical metaphors to relate the delicate push-and-pull of the group, the nuances of their relationship as subtle as a rubato shift.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
In A Scatter of Light, Malinda Lo lets us look at sex, gender identity, sexism and young love through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old woman.
Its book flap says it’s a ‘masterful queer coming-of-age story.’ The beauty is that the story unfolds so naturally that, even though the heroine is thrown off-balance by her sudden attraction to another woman, it reads like any engaging story of risky summer love. A big part of that is the setting.
Aria made the mistake of letting her high school graduation party hook-up take a nude photo of her. He, of course, suffers no repercussions for posting the photo on social media while she is admonished by the principal, her friends and her father. Luckily, her punishment leads to romance.
She was supposed to spend the summer with her friends at Martha’s Vineyard but instead is shuttled cross-country to her grandmother in Marin County, California. She expects to be miserable without her two best friends though she’s enjoyed a great relationship with her grandmother Joan, an accomplished and recently widowed artist.
When Steph shows up to tend Joan’s garden, Aria is surprised at the sparks she feels and at her sudden need to know the tattooed woman in the green tank top. Their dates include late night parties in SF’s Castro District with Steph’s friends, a Gay Pride march and a lesbian-led rock concert in Golden Gate Park.
She was fortunate to find her gay self in San Francisco in 2015. On June 26 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. The celebrations and weddings are a wonderful backdrop to Aria’s pursuit of Steph. While she’s falling in love, America’s highest court is finally saying, ‘yes, it’s OK.’
Dave Rhody Writing 